He turned into the room and stopped. Aurora was standing by the sideboard, a plate in hand, laughing with Morgan as she loaded eggs onto her plate. She looked so very lovely. So happy and so free. So much like the girl he had loved and lost. And so much like the woman who had bewitched him all over again.
It was true they needed to deal with the past. But in this moment, he only wanted to focus on the present. The rest would come, and he wanted to enjoy her while he had her.
Chapter 13
Aurora stood at the sideboard with Nicholas’s brother and sister-in-law, Morgan and Lizzie Banfield. They had been the first in the breakfast room that morning, though the others had begun to trickle in one by one, smiling and saying their good mornings.
Still, she stayed with the couple, enjoying their easy banter. Two more different people she could not have designed in her mind. Lizzie was soft and gentle, a little timid and quiet, while Morgan was boisterous and playful, the perfect depiction of a reformed rake who still knew how to turn a situation to his own advantage.
And yet, despite how different their personalities were, they matched like one piece of a puzzle to its mate. He drew Lizzie from her shell. She calmed Morgan with just a look or slight graze of her hand. They did it effortlessly, almost as if it took no thought to balance the other. Dark and light, always together, always in perfect harmony.
Aurora knew Lizzie was the sister of the Duke of Brighthollow and, of course, Morgan was one of the previous Duke of Roseford’s wayward bastards. So the pair were from different worlds entirely.
Rather like her and Nicholas, in truth. That had always caused friction between them when their love was just blossoming. She’d known her father too well not to fear his reaction and wanted to run away together. Nicholas had insisted on approaching her father like a gentleman.
Only he hadn’t. He’d just left.
So it seemed he had decided, without input from her, that their worldscouldn’tmesh like Lizzie and Morgan’s. Did he feel the same way now? Now that she was the one down on her luck and he about to take a title? Certainly tying his star to hers would not make it easier on him.
“Are you still with us, Lady Lovell?” Morgan asked, but his tone was playful.
She shook her head. “I am, Mr. Banfield, forgive me. I was just thinking of the past, I suppose.”
Lizzie sent a brief side glance to her husband and then smiled. “You and Nicholas knew each other as children, I have heard. I wonder what he was like as a boy.”
“Yes, was he so very serious and good?” Morgan asked. “Or do you have wicked tales I could hold over his head?”
Despite her tangled feelings, Aurora couldn’t help but laugh. “Ah, the younger brother always wanting to find a way to best the older. That is an old tale.”
“I suppose it is to most,” Morgan said with a smile that was suddenly a little sad. “I often wonder what kind of relationship we would have had if we had all been raised together.”
That comment pushed Aurora’s troubles away. She knew the separation was something each of Roseford’s illegitimate children suffered from. It was actually very warming to see them begin to develop those strong familial bonds after all these years apart. She wanted that for Nicholas.
“His father…er, the man who raised him,” she began with a blush. “Bertrand Gillingham was my father’s man of affairs.”
“Was he?” Morgan said with a genuine look of surprise. “I didn’t know that. I’m Lizzie’s brother’s man of affairs now. It’s an interesting job.”
“It is, and his father was very good at it. He had a difficult subject to manage, though. I think, more difficult than your own.”
Lizzie smiled now. “Sometimes.”
“Oh, your brother is only everything good and decent and you know it,” Morgan said with a broad smile.
“He is that,” Lizzie said.
“Well, my father was…not,” Aurora admitted slowly, for this was revealing a great deal about herself. “He could be cruel. He didn’t look upon anyone else as his equal, even those with similar title. He made Gillingham’s job difficult. I think my mother felt sorry about it, so she offered a boon. Or a balm, perhaps, to keep the man working for my father. Nicholas was allowed to join us in the schoolroom. And he and my brother and I became fast friends.”
It was funny. So often she only thought of those last few months together with Nicholas. The bubbling passion that had never been fulfilled, the desperate love, the broken heart. But talking about the early years put her to mind of far happier times.
“He must have been a good student,” Morgan said. “Smart as a whip, that one.”
“It runs in the family,” Lizzie interjected, and was rewarded by a brief smile from her husband.
“He was an excellent student,” Aurora agreed. “He bested my poor brother Thomas at all the subjects. They had a friendly rivalry, but it never exited the schoolroom. When Thomas went away to Eton, my mother convinced my father to sponsor Nicholas, as well.”
“I would wager our real father might have had something to do with that, too,” Morgan mused. “He did with me.”
“You’re probably right. Though Nicholas didn’t know about the duke until much later—fifteen, I think.” She remembered how devastated he’d been, how hurt and out of place. She’d so desperately wanted to comfort him.
